


Fade-Touched

by kiwipixel77



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, One Shot Collection, Prompt Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23937961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwipixel77/pseuds/kiwipixel77
Summary: Every time Dorian touches Lavellan, something happens. Usually something painful. Or embarrassing. Or infuriating. But, always, something.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus, Male Lavellan/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48





	1. Vir

**A/N: Holy shit I wrote this thing five years ago and only just found it.**

**I like the idea though, and for now it's a one-shot, but I may write some more chapters if there's interest and also if I'm not lazy. We'll see.**

**If I do, these will be small one-shots centering around times Dorian touches the Inquisitor (male Lavellan here) and the pivotal moments that occur because of that. Good, bad, otherwise.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

The first thing Dorian ever notices about the elf is his hair.

It’s not his pointed ears – the thing that marks him as _different_ from the rest, that makes him stick out like – well, like an elf among the humans around him. And it’s not his delicate, whorling tattoos blooming across his face in all the likeness of a young tree, nor is it his _freaky big elf eyes,_ as Bull so gracefully proclaims.

No. It is his hair.

Cropped short for an elf, perhaps even for a human from this barbaric southern wasteland. But it is longer on the top, and the sides are shaved close to his head, extremely well-kept and trimmed as if the man had only just stepped away from the mirror. And the whole thing parted and flipped casually close, but not quite, in the middle of his head, as if to say _why no, I spent next to no time on my hair this morning, haha,_ but for anyone with even a hundredth of the fashion and grooming sense one from Tevinter might possess, it shows that an excessive, nigh _compulsive_ measure of time and thought and care had gone into the entire thing.

A pompadour of sorts, so unlike the ones found in the north, but striking in its exotic boldness, evidently evolved in the isolation of Dalish camps.

If he’s being honest, Dorian has not seen such a fabulously tidy and striking hairstyle since he so foolishly (though he would never ever admit _that_ ) left his hot and humid homeland for this frigid, rocky mire of boorish, stinky, shaggy brutes. And, since he’s being honest, the hair might even hold a candle to his own.

He’s captivated. Enraptured. _Enchanted,_ you might even say. Soft and shiny and full of bounce and _washed,_ for Maker’s sake.

The hair is utterly magnificent. A monument to the arduous sacrifice of preening, of primping, of priming. A testament to exceptional self-dignity and style.

He wants to touch it.

“What are you staring at?” the elf frowns at him. Dorian’s eyes flicker down from the gorgeous shock of _gorgeous_ to meet his.

Ah, yes. Those freaky big elf eyes. Though not half so big and not at all freaky. Quite fetching, if he’s still being honest.

And honestly, that doesn’t happen very often.

They’re brown. Just like his hair. Just like the leather armour he’s wearing. Just like the _shit_ he makes Dorian feel like for hesitating a second too long.

Because the elf smirks. A dangerous thing. A nasty little thing. A tiny, crookedly sly smile that just _reeks_ of knowing. And the pleasure one takes from knowing.

“Like what you see?”

Dorian laughs. Scoffs, really. He’s been played before. He’s played others before. For a man not of Orlais, Dorian could play games remarkably well.

He waves a dismissive hand around the blood-spattered Chantry in – good lord, where was he again? Some little backwater town called Redcliffe or some such. The old stone building was a nice place, really, for the south, hundreds of little candles flickering in the dark, shining their watery light on the charred shag rug (a quite hideous thing that Dorian is glad to see destroyed) and the cobbled floor littered with demon corpses this elf had so… _causally_ obliterated with the wave of his own hand.

“I do. Like what I see, I mean. You fight pretty well – for a heathen elf swinging through the trees, that is. Though I suspect that flashy green thing on your hand has a lot more to do with it.”

A woman with a perpetual scowl on her face, and a great shaggy bear of a man hiding behind a dreadful beard, and a massive Qunari with scars and an eye patch and horns the breadth of the Amaranthine chuckle at that. Well, not the woman.

“Do you have any idea who you are insulting, _mage?”_ she hisses, Nevarran accent thick as this Qunari’s muscles, her hand moving to the hilt of her sword. “This is the Herald of Andrast–”

“Thank you, Cassandra, that’s quite enough,” the elf dismisses, as if he’s done this a thousand times before. Without dropping that smirk, however, and not missing a beat, the elf with the exquisite cut crosses his arms.

“You’re not so bad yourself. For an evil Tevinter magister, that is. Though I suspect growing up in a city saturated with the blood of two thousand years of slaughtered elves has a lot more to do with it.”

Ha! Well. _Quite_ the introduction. Dorian can just _feel_ in his very bones that the two of them – that _all_ of them, his peculiar choice of friends included – would get along famously.

So he smirks back and, Maker bless him, the madman steps forward and ruffles the elf’s perfectly sculpted hair. “Well now, see here, my dear miscreant friend –” and he pauses, giving the illusion of wisdom, but actually revelling in the fucking softness of these locks – “it’s much closer to three thousand years.”

Dorian’s bones have never been more wrong in his entire life.

* * *

**A/N: Doo doo doo, leave a review. Plz.**


	2. Athim

**A/N: Helloooo my lovelies! I've returned! I guess this isn't a one-shot, after all! Merry Christmas!**

* * *

For such a small man, the elf sure does take up a _lot_ of space.

He stumbled out of the Fade that day, Cassandra says, and with him only the clothes upon his back and the tattoos on his face. He wields two small silver daggers and dons only the lightest of leather armours. He takes only what he needs, and never leaves anything behind, and steps lightly through the world as if he were never there in the first place.

No… perhaps the Inquisitor does not _take up_ space, Dorian thinks – rather the opposite, in fact – he _fills_ it.

The man dances around Haven like a ship upon the violent Amaranthine storms, this way and that, here and there, borne from one person to the next – _is there anything you need? What can I do to make it better? Where can we head to next?_ He is there and then he isn’t, in the Chantry’s flickering candlelight, and then in the tavern’s ruddy glow, and in between the clashing of shields and swords down in the Commander’s training ring.

But not only that, see, and _here_ is the difference between _taking up_ and _filling:_ he sings, sometimes, in the Chantry with Cassandra and the Mothers; ancient, wild words Dorian can’t understand but that makes his heart stir. He drinks away the snowy nights with the one-eyed Qunari and the hairy dwarf, their laughs infectious as the blight. He grabs a sword and shows the soldiers how they stood wrong, and how to stand right – when to go forward, and when to turn back.

In all the places they’ve travelled, all the people they’ve met, the Inquisitor aims to leave a little piece of himself behind. He is trying to worm his little elfy way into the hearts of them all, one giant, stinky brute at a time.

And yet…

_And yet…_

Well. It’s quite obvious, isn’t it?

He is everything the Inquisition needs. Someone strong and decisive.

And he is exactly what everyone hates. Someone a little too _elf._

Also, he is headed Dorian’s way as we speak.

Dorian smiles – there’s a certain lilt to the way the elf walks, a small dither and dip in his step. Hardly noticeable, perhaps, to any one of these hairy heathens, and hidden for fear of showing weakness, but to the perceptive (scrutinous? judgemental? Dorian’s) eye, it’s there. Perhaps he had been wounded in his youth, and now carries the reminder of that. It’s endearing, he thinks, almost as much as the time he pretends _not_ to spend on his glorious hair. He’s going to ask the man about that one day.

He steps away from the cabin he is leaning against to intercept the elf on his way to the Chantry. “Ah, my dearest Inquisitor,” he greets with the most charming of smiles he can muster. He bows to the elf, adding to his air of reverence. Or annoying the man. Those two are remarkably similar it seems.

Dorian rises. The elf frowns.

Ah, so annoyance.

“Can I help you, Dorian?”

“No, no, my dear, I do not require your services,” he says – after all, Dorian _loathes_ asking for help – “I simply wished to speak with you a moment.”

The elf hesitates, eyes the Chantry doors a moment.

“Come now, surely you cannot be in such a hurry to be mired in another absolutely _riveting_ meeting with your advisors, now, could you? Besides, I am much better company, don’t you agree?”

He sighs, concedes, crosses his arms with the ghost of a smirk.

“All right, Dorian, I’m listening.”

“And I thank you for your time. Truly, I know how utterly _infested_ with errands you are at all waking hours, it seems. Not enough light in the day, in my opinion. Have you considered using a replication spell on yourself? I’m sure I could whip you up something in short fashion –”

“Dorian, this meeting is in five minutes and it’s important.”

“Ah, yes, my apologies. It’s – err, well, it’s not often I get to converse with another human. _Person,_ I mean. I get a little carried away. Well, _you_ must know.”

The elf narrows his eyes. “Know what?”

“What that’s like, of course! Being stranded in a sea of humans, alienated, outcast. I get it. I really do. I’m of Tevinter, after all. You know, evil magister, here to sacrifice your baby in a horrific blood magic ritual to appease the Old Gods or whatever somesuch. Eugh. How _tacky._ You and I aren’t exactly the most… beloved of souls here, I reckon.”

The elf’s frown turns to a scowl – a downright severe one at that. “Is this your attempt at finding common ground? Because as far as I’m concerned, you and I are nothing alike.”

Ah, yes. Dorian’s been dreading this conversation, truth be told (he might’ve simply hoped they could… skip over the entire _elf-Tevinter-slave-thing_ ) but alas, he supposes he should count himself lucky it hasn’t happened before now. Or that the Inquisitor hasn’t tossed him out the gates onto his ass-end yet.

That would be dreadful. He’s quite attached to this particular pair of breeches.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as saying _that,”_ he scoffs lightly. “I mean, there’s an entire verse’s worth of similarities between you and I. Ah! We don’t fully believe in the Maker, for one. Two: we’re both _devishly_ handsome, in everyone’s opinion. We’re the only two people to skip through time and _survive,_ remember? And another: we’re so dreadfully far from home, surrounded by big hairy men who stink of horse – when was the last time that Warden had a warm bath, do you reckon? And another –”

The elf draws himself up to his full height – still a good head shorter than the mage – and steels himself, the very act of doing so saturating the air around him with the sort of heavy _presence_ the elf commands, so unlike anything Dorian has ever experienced from anyone before – not the mightiest magister nor the emperor himself could ever hope to wield such an air of attention, such demanding _power._

 _“Look,”_ he bites, the tattoos around his eyes crinkling as he scowls, “I am going to get this out of the way now: I don’t like you. I don’t like Tevinter. I don’t like what your ancestors did to my ancestors. I don’t like how much you talk yet how little you say, skirting around the truth like a halla around a wolf. You and I, we are _nothing_ alike. Do not pretend that we are. You are here because you are useful, and if you cease to be useful, I will send you on your way. Understand?”

Dorian swallows, opens his mouth as if to protest –

“However, I am not an elf who dwells in the past. I am not responsible for what my ancestors did, and neither are you. I cannot forgive, but I am willing to forget. I will judge you based on your actions alone and not those of your forefathers. I don’t want to be friends, but I also don’t want to be enemies. Do you understand, Dorian?”

Dorian blinks – he’s almost speechless. Almost.

“I – yes, I do, Inquisitor. Quite well.”

“Good.”

The elf turns to leave, but Dorian catches him by the wrist, holding him in place. He frowns again, but something in his face makes Dorian think the man is weary underneath, exhausted beyond belief, beyond the years he’s been given.

Of _course_ he is. He’s tired. Tired of being Inquisitor, of being a pawn in the human’s plans, instrument to a god he doesn’t even believe in. Tired of explaining himself to all who cross his path, of assuring them all that yes, he is quite capable of more than just throwing sticks and grunting like an animal, of the looks and the jeers and the sometimes outright _meanness._ Tired of working three times as hard at it all, and tired because the reason is his ears.

(Because the reason is his birthplace and his staff, it echoes).

And suddenly Dorian gets it. He _really_ gets it.

“I just – I simply wished for you to know you needn’t be alone,” Dorian says, and the softness in his voice surprises even himself. “I am here, if you ever need to talk. As a person. Not as the Inquisitor.”

Something in his face softens a little, his tattoos – his _vallaslin_ – smoothing out just the tiniest little bit.

Dorian is now hyper-aware of his fingers around the other man’s thin wrist, glowing and warm from his mark, and promptly lets go. He clears his throat, uncharacteristically awkward about it all.

“Besides,” he scoffs, “I’d like to have a chat sometime regarding those hideous curtains in the Chantry. Do you own the Chantry? Because if they don’t get replaced soon, they might just go _missing,_ dear Lavellan.”

The elf smiles, almost shyly. “Aravas.”

“Pardon?”

“That is my given name. Aravas.”

“Really? Are you quite sure it isn’t _Inquisitor?”_

Aravas laughs, the sound lovely in the falling snow, and Dorian rather likes the sound. He’s going to make sure he hears it more frequently, he decides.

“And quite frankly, I am outraged. How could anyone not like _me?”_

“Don’t push your luck, Pavus. _Fenedhis,_ I’m going to be late for my meeting.”

“Yes, yes, of course, don’t let me keep you any longer. Run along now, it’s quite alright. I _do_ rather like watching you leave.”

Now it’s the Inquisitor’s turn to blush.

“I – right, yes, well…”

And then he’s gone.

Maker Divine, he’s going to need a few new pairs of breeches, he thinks. The Inquisitor will throw him out on his ass yet.

* * *

**A/N: Don't worry, I won't focus too much on his elfyness, but alas, he is an elf, and it does play an important part in who he is and where the story goes. I always thought the game did well on race-specific dialogue/actions, but it could have done better. This is my attempt at that, I guess.**

**Hope you enjoyed it! Leave a review, they are my nicotine in this pandemic, I don't get out at all anymore.**

**Thanks!!!**


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